Sony DCR-HC36 The tape door will not shut. I spent 400 on this camera and would love to keep using it.

This is usually caused by an oxidized, misaligned or defective Audio/Video drum. You can try running a cleaning tape through the camera. If this does not solve the problem the camera will need to be serviced by a qualified service technician.

My name is Rick and I'm a professional repair technician with over 20 years in the business and have repaired many of these. I'm semi retired and work from home with little overhead so I can keep repair costs low. If you decide to have the camera repaired, please click HERE for a directory listing that suits your needs.

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Tape mechanism problems can be quite complicated. This will require disassembling the camera to repair the tape mechanism and can be done fairly inexpensively. However, it's not a user serviceable problem and will need to be repaired by a qualified service technician.

My name is Rick and I'm a professional repair technician with over 20 years in the business and have repaired many of these. I'm semi retired and work from home with little overhead so I can keep repair costs low. If you decide to have the camera repaired, please click HERE for a directory listing that suits your needs.

If this response has been of any help to you, please be sure and give a positive vote for me on FixYa.com.

You should not need additional drivers if you have Windows Movie Maker on your machine, it's standard kit for Vista.
Connect with a firewire cable and open WMM and capture from the tape. Firewire is also known as iLink or IEEE1394a.

Tape mechanism problems are quite complicated but they can usually be repaired fairly inexpensively. However, it's not a user serviceable problem and will need to be diagnosed by a qualified service technician.

My name is Rick and I'm a professional repair technician with over 20 years in the business and have repaired many of these. I'm semi retired and work from home with little overhead so I can keep repair costs low. If you decide to have the camera repaired, please click HERE for a directory listing that suits your needs.

If this response has been of any help to you, please be sure and give a positive vote for me on FixYa.com .

Are you trying to transfer video via usb? I recently found out from Sony's website that vista does not support video transfer over usb. You need a fire wire or iEEE cord. Check if your computer has the port to support this.

These mino tape cameras unlike the larger 8mm tape camera have never worked well because they jam in-side the capstan and get slung round the picture heads, a thing the larger 8mm tape hardly ever did, maybe that is why Sony went to the mini tape, it brought lots more money in to the Tec guys to un-twine the stuff.

Hi
Try a miniDV tape cleaning cassette

Have you try cleaning tape? Sometimes, it is just a dirty head. Try to clean it, see if it helps.

Camcorders have only one color system to record accordingly, either PAL or NTSC
Sony DCR-HC36 is NTSC camcorder and DCR-HC36E would be PAL camcorder.
Hope this info will help you.
Thanks.

you have to buy a memory card first then you turn the mode to where it says CAMERA MEMORY then you hit the photo button